Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s hopes to stay above race-based identity politics took a dive this week as his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright defended his views before the Washington DC National Press Club that the US government is guilty of terrorism, created AIDS and disseminated crack cocaine to destroy black neighborhoods, and needs to adopt communistic principles in order to solve the racial divide Wright is endeavoring so hard to keep open. Barely controling his bitterness at not having attended 20 years-worth of sermons where Wright’s racist and anti-American views were made known, Obama, contrary to his own deeply held convictions that bitterness should drive people to cling to religion, rhetorically dropped-kicked his pastor in a press conference yesterday. In response to questions about the timing of his disavowal of Wright, Obama protested that this had nothing to do with his flagging campaign, that he was indeed a new kind of politician able to rise above racial politics, the politics of hate, and the politics of personal destruction, that he most certainly had never lied to the American people about his relationship with Rev. Wright, and that the communisticprinciplesespoused in his owncampaign platform were in no way inspired or encourage by his former spiritual advisor.